Ivana Balabanova, North Macedonia
Versatile dancer, choreographer, teacher, interdisciplinary artist from Skopje, North Macedonia. Her experience is extensive both in the aspects of creativity, teaching, and in the field of cultural management. As an artist, she boldly explores forms of art, creating strong visual images for the audience at the junction of the language of urban styles and modern dance.
The author of many productions, including “Silence” for the National Ballet of Macedonia, “Her own space” in collaboration with sound artist Alessandro Olla, “Why Don’t You Cry When the Lambs Die”, “Liminal Body”, “My blood, my politics”, “On/Off” for the Contemporary Dance Theater “Cannon Dance”.
Her audiovisual performance “Code #9”, developed together with Alessandro Olla, was presented at the famous MASDANZA Gran Canaria festival and received the third jury award among 500 participants from around the world. This work will be presented to the audience this year as part of the Open Look festival performance program.
Ivana is the founder and art director of the Beatrix Cultural Center, Skopje, where she works with young dancers, contributing to the development of the local dance community. As an innovator in this field, she leads educational and performance programs – the international dance festival “Beatrix Dance League”, master classes for the local community “Beatrix Specials”, the program “Beatrix Dance Caravan”, which promotes the spread of knowledge from the capital to the province, and others.
Winner of the “Youth Civic Engagement” award from USAID for contribution to the development of the dance community of North Macedonia.
Founder of the dance group “TANC BUNKER”, a joint project with choreographers Adriana Dantsevska and Dejan Bitrowski from North Macedonia.
Ivana combines the languages of urban styles and modern dance into an intriguing mixture, which forms the basis of her technique.
The process of creating the Code#9 work gave a natural impetus to the movement, which Ivana continued to deepen and expand as part of her research at the master’s program at the University of ZHdK Zurich.
Ivanа finds interest in the opportunity to draw inspiration from life experience and establish a strong connection with himself, which can later be manifested and perceived by the public. Working with dancers, Ivana focuses on expanding the possibilities of awareness, researching inherited and acquired knowledge, which subsequently become a support in their holistic presentation.
Consciously directing the energy that unites the body and mind, time and space through the practice of improvisation and a specially prepared repertoire, Ivana offers to explore both individual and group qualities.
At the master class, Ivan will share his movement technique aimed at exploring the diversity of body capabilities in the widest range – from extremely strong and sharp movement to radically opposite, soft and coherent, connecting into a unique flow. ‘Intriguing movement’ is the result of the search for these new opportunities and understanding what our body is capable of.
Her technique is distinguished by impressive work of hands, strong flowerwork, combining techniques of urban styles and modern dance, sharpness and accuracy of movement.
